Thursday, December 19, 2013

Defective Products are designed and manufacturing not as per design is called defective products

Defects in Defective Products are visible to sellers

Defective Products are sold as seconds goods

Defective Products are rejected by customers

Services are not designed & therefore defective services are not easy to identify

Defective Services are being seen & experienced by customers

Apparently Defective Services are not seen & experienced by sellers

Even defective services are also rejected by customers , however since it is not visible to the sellers , seller wont know the reason for customer defections & complaints

Unlike Products , services are dynamic & made available every time customers want it. Therefore probability defective services for un-designed services is far more than defective products which are manufactured en-mass & stored for delivery.

Therefore it is most critical for service providers to design the service & map customer journey to know the defects in service design. Its difficult & challenging but critical.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Outbound calls , frequent SMSs to market the products, untrained callers all these are making recipient of calls irritable.

On the other hand when we call inbound call centers to solve our problems ; punching of innumerable buttons, repeating the problems to every agents, line disconnect, again repeating the process - huge irritation.

When customers wish to approach any of the following issues, none can be handled without irritation ;

Complaint Resolution

Goods Return

After Sales Service

Mis-Sell

Over-Sell

Over- Bill

Long Procedures

Complicated Forms & Bills

Complex Features

Multiple & Unwanted Choices

Most of the activities rolled out by an organisation creates irritation. The main cause if lack of or no customer focus specially no end to end customer focus. No effort to step into the shoes of customer to design customer experience. No effort or mind for service design. No one in charge of end to end customer experience.

Map the customer journey, design the service, take rigorous customer feedback , read social media reviews, put someone senior enough in charge of end to end customer experience.

Convert your Customer Irritation quotient into Customer Happiness and you have won the customer for long, his repeat purchase, his higher pocket share, his referral contacts.

Monday, December 2, 2013

Product & service design is an integral part of over all customer experience. However it is easier to find out bad product design from its usage but equally difficult to know bad service design.

There is a saying that if there is a physical queue / waiting for anything , it is a bad design. If user is finding it difficult to fill a form it is bad design.

In every product & service there is an element of design.

You go to buy a railway ticket or buy a insurance policy, apply for insurance claim, opening a bank account or availing bank loan, buying a house from a real estate company , availing medical treatment at hospitals, buying a movie ticket and watching movie in a theater, roaming in a mall, roads & traffic flow , hotel booking, check in/out process everything is a design.

Now if these intangible services are not deliberately designed keeping customer/users ease , convenience & comfort in mind, it will happen without deliberate design and is likely to spoil customer experience.

No part of business or enterprise activities happen automatically. It is not either it is deliberately designed or deliberately not designed but most of the time it is not designed as entrepreneur or service provider is not aware that it has to be deliberately designed.

All physical aspects are designed by various design experts, however its final flow to the customer i.e. sales process, after sales process, actual service av-ailment process skip the design aspects. It is these gaps in service design creates bad and frustrating customer experience (CX). Hardware & tangible are designed but soft & intangible parts remain un-designed.

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Ratan Tata recently acknowledged that positioning Nano
as a cheap car was a mistake. It was international branding Guru Jack
Trout , who 2 weeks back opined that positioning Nano as a cheap car was a
mistake.

Mr. Tata accepting this is a welcome step. Most
entrepreneurs won’t accept their mistake and would try to justify
their decision any how.

Larger points are ;

- Even if price is your competitive advantage, competitive on
price won’t work always and in some cases like this will spoil
the brand.

- Why to focus on price when product feature &
experience can out weight price considerations

- Irrespective of category of product or services, owners,
users should feel proud of enraging with brands. In the case of
NANO it was missing.

Even in the case of low cost airlines, differentiation should
happen on services, punctuality & feeling of
getting associated with brands.

Mostly companies forget this FEELING part. Owing NANO
car means owner can’t afford costly car & using cheap car. This
is a negative feeling for owners and will deter many others because of these
negative feelings.

Like the brand ONIDA has taught us years ago, neighbors’
ENVY, owners’ PRIDEshould be
the positioning for every brand. NANO is missing on both these counts.

Focus and position on customer experience & how you make them
feel & people will find out pricing of their own.

When companies miss out on experience part or have no clue about it , they focus on price.What is your view on positioning of affordable housing projects?

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Yes principles of Customer Experience equally apply to all the
entities whether for profit, not for profit, Govt entities, professional firms,
B2B & B2C. It is not just B2C phenomena.

Every product or service recipient expects better experience.
There is always expectation gaps and scope for
improvements which varies in degree.

In case if some enterprise is in the monopoly business orGovt entities like
municipal corporation or railways, it is all the more important as
bad experience will have
social repercussions. Longer queues, longer time for approvals
or attending application , indifferent staff attitudes everything
adds up to personal & social stress & frustrations.

Professional firms (doctors/lawyers/accountants & the likes)
mostly enjoy relationship of trust and confidentiality with
their clients. There is an approach of one-up man ship by these
professionals with their clients. In no other case
service recipient is so vulnerable. Here again like the one in
monopoly business better clients experience counts. It not only
is necessary for better social impact but also counts as new and
better service providers are around.

In the absence of advertising professional consulting is the area where most business comes through clients’ referrals & word of mouth. Creating a culture of offering delightful clients' experience is the prerequisite for these firms to grow. One may take a clue from Extreme Customer Orientation by

- Check/Measure what is kind of experience is doled out at each of
the touch points

- Internally discuss scope of improvements

- If require brainstorm entire new service design

- Train & retrain front facing and support staff

- Prototype the new or redefined service

- Fine tune with initial clients’ feedback

- Roll out the service

Make clients feedback an integral part of services like billing.

Remember HAPPY customers will refer others and unhappy will look for every
opportunity to get out. Both will use social media subsequently to share their experience.

To sum up in the words of management guru of our times Peter
Drucker “The purpose of the business (incl profession) is to create customers (incl clients). ” If this is
the purpose ; HOW any forms of entity can ignore CX what will retain customers
, create more customers & offers more pocket share of customers?

Monday, November 25, 2013

I am a customer of two of the largest private sector banks, one
PSU bank, largest credit card company , some insurance companies, public
utility companies , telecom companies and one thing is common in them ;

NO Companies have asked me for any feedback ever or for
last many years.

I visited one
recently open but popular restaurant
and along-with the bill there was small crisp feedback form.
Now everything happened precedent to the feedback form was
almost perfect. Ambiance, food quality, customer service, attentive staff,
clean & perfumed washrooms, food on display , presentation, menu
card , light music & including valet parking etc. Barring a
few elements which could have made the experience delightful , everything was
perfect.

After a near perfect show when they are asking for feedback they
are aware that they have done their best however still wish to
know where they misused and open to improvements. They are
aware they are living in times of Zomato.

Companies those who know power of social media have
stared improving their customer experience. However likes
of some (no, many many) companies mentioned on top of the blog still think that
they are doing good without even seeking customer feedback.

Customer feedback is not only the MOST powerful tool but is the
business critical tool. It tells you whether you are meeting
the expectations for whom you are in existence. Jeff Bezos , customer
experience champion CEO of Amazon.com, says " don't just listen
customers, understand them." How would you do that without asking
them?

Customer feedback gives great insight, it makes customer feel you
care, and acting on the feedback certainly adds value to the
business.

When the enterprise is concerned about feedback they
will perform well in the first place and
even if they have failed somewhere they will know from the
feedback. Customers' anger will also dilute after filling the feedback
form.

When was the last time your enterprise has taken customer feedback?
No excuse for B2B companies.

Look at erstwhile cinema houses and multi-screen multiplexes , look at Udipi South Indian hotels & fast food/pizza/burger chains, look at housing societies built 10/15 years back and present day housing societies, look everywhere hospitals, retailing , banking - everything has changed and is changing. Everything is moving from being product & services to experience.

It is the need of today. This shift happens with every new generation of consumers. With new generation of consumers comes new generation of entrepreneurs. They break the old way of thinking and create blue ocean for themselves.

Therefore issue is to check whether you are in the business of selling obsolete products & services. Here obsolete doesn't means typewriter vs computer. Here it means old way of thinking about business.

Yes ,

1) If CUSTOMER is not at the center of all your thinking and action , you are in obsolete business.

2) If EMPLOYEES are not considered most important asset of the business , you are in obsolete business.

3) If CRM is the only thing that is happening as far as customer services is concerned , you are in obsolete business.

4) If OFFLINE is the only mode of your doing business , you are in obsolete business.

5) If SOCIAL MEDIA and CONTENT MARKETING is not a part of your marketing plan, you are in obsolete business.

6) If your enterprise is not measuring customer experience and employee happiness along with ROI and ROCE, you are in obsolete business.

7) If your enterprise is only thinking about single bottom-line and not about social and environmental impact of your business, you are in obsolete business.

8) If your branding and advertising is not matching with actual customer experience,

you are in obsolete business.

9) If your board is not comprising of professionals from diverse fields & Corporate Governance is only limited to compliance , you are in obsolete business.

If you escape all the above IFs , YES, you can congratulate your self , your business & its products & services are NOT obsolete.

Even if your are selling TEA and not using any advance technology to produce , all the above pointers will keep you out of OBSOLATION.

Those who think this is not applicable to their company soon
will find themselves in Oasis, deserted by customers, no customer around the
company. Company will be almost out of business.

During last few days I came to know about two incidences where
companies have left public sector banks with which they had long association.
In one case it was more than 30 years of association and they left the PSU bank
with whom they grew and become big.

Reason in both cases, long indecisiveness & longer
decision making process. Meeting the speed expectations and exceeding the
same is great customer experience. Its delightful , its wow !!.

Bad experience is bad even without cost like long
waiting at hospital and restaurants however it becomes worse when it
impacts customers' pocket. When indecisiveness costs , it not only painful
but it impacts bottom-line.

This is just about PSU banks but CX by private companies
across the sectors is hardly any better. Unless the customer journeys are mapped,
expectation gaps are mapped, silo-ed vision is converted into overall end to
end vision, someone is put in charge of CX , company cannot
comprehensively design customer experience which exceeds expectations
and delight customers.

Product & Services must have built in CX & service design elements in the first place to become viable business proposition. Products & Services without CX & service
design elements are obsolete & just surviving on
ventilator.

Monday, November 18, 2013

Sanjay Leela Bhansali through his latest movieRam Leela,teaches every entrepreneur what the
customer experience is all about.

Confused?

Yes that is true. He teaches us how the story is to be
told. Script is critical but that is not sufficient. Story must be told in a
manner which captures all of our senses. We have many movies with great stories but
failing commercially. This is one of the basic & important reasons.

It must capture all our senses.Ram Leelais visual splendour. This
is otherwise a violent love story but what stand the movie
apart is its sets, costumes , colors , songs, dances, music &
over all GRANDEUR experience.

Someone after viewing the movie opined ; it has
senseless violence & no story. If you go to movies to know
the story, well you may better read the story book. This is like if you wish to
have a coffee, well any Udipi hotel would be okay, but we have many many Coffee
brands charging hell lot of money for Coffee PLUS & making huge
amount of money.

Cinema is a visual medium so it must be experienced with all the senses. Every
director through his movies is telling stories & every entrepreneur is
selling something. It is HOW you tell stories or HOW you sell good &
services that sets you apart from the others. That decides the premium
or otherwise of your offerings.

If you wonder your offerings is no different than
competitors , not much effort is put on HOW part. If you wish to create new
differentiate offerings, focus on HOW of the offerings.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali not only knows about telling
stories but he also knows HOW to tell stories which captivate his audience
& make them spellbound. He could have just told the story without much
focusing on HOW but it is his HOW which is fetching him 5 star ratings. It
must be a very hard work but easier options never fetch 5 star ratings and rave
reviews.

Customer is a human being ; so he is coming to you for
experiencing your offerings with all the five senses. More the senses
you capture, more the differentiation you create, more the competitive advantage you gain.

Friday, November 15, 2013

You have
used services of design architect to design your office promise

You have
used services of interior designer to design your office interiors

You have used services of graphic designer to
design your soft images , logo , stationery

You have used services of industrial designer to
design your manufacturing set up

You have
used services of product designer to design your products even
;

You have used services of fashion designer to
design your clothes

Designers are only used by companies
& individuals for self use and benefits. However in a era of customer
experience where every company is in service business , unless
companies uses designing skills of following two class of designers,
competitive advantage wont be achieved by use of all other designers. They are
;

Customer Experience Designers

Service Designers

To an extent their role over laps but there is a clear cut need
for their skills to design what is called excellent , delightful & memorable
customer experience.

Service Designers (SD) actually design the
services how that will be delivered. Its about intangible ways in which
customer feels WOW !! while availing the services.

Customer Experience (CX) Design is a large canvas which includes HOW
the experience will be created , unfolded at all touch points.

CX covers
entire customer journey while SD covers each of the touch
points separately & how actually services are delivered. Unless
proactively designed services & customer experience will be listless
, plain, undifferentiated and many a times frustrating for
customers.

Its time businesses MUST embrace CX & SD skills - In house or outsourced.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Couple of weeks back my website vendor discontinued to host my website.
I inquired about the reason & I was told by one of the employees of the
company that domain renewal amount was not paid and due date is over. I told
her but I confirmed over phone to renew & I will make payment in a week.
She said no , we do not have power to renew without payment.

I am their customer since 15 years, I confirmed to pay
over phone, I paid all these year before the due date , yet
the incidence took place.

Discussions:

I took up the matter with their MD. His response; we do
not authorize our employees to renew without payment. I said but
my long relation and past payment record!!!. He said no in times of low margin & stiff competition we do not invest in
such systems to track all these as it is costly. I said but before you people
unhost any website shouldn't senior management look at the
defaulters list to differentiate between habitual defaulters & onetime, big , long
association based defaulters ? He said we have 50 renewals daily & we
can't manually track like that.

CX issues:

- All customers are treated equally - irrespective
of longevity of association, past track record, size of the customer

- No value for customers' verbal communication

- No empowerment or system to monitor
before discontinuance of services

- No communication on the day or after discontinuance from the
company

- No feeling of apology but all justifications for the action taken

I was told by the MD that 90% customers pay online. That means only
10% irregular customers. Management has no time even to monitor this 10% of
customers also before taking such a drastic action. What a misplaced priorities
!!

First of all I doubt this is happening in many companies as long term association and payment track records are the basic things to check while one decides to discontinue services or discontinue doing business.

We all are dealing with many private & public sector vendors.
Everyone offers time to pay once the services are availed. Here in
this case for the want of advance payment services were discontinued.

Big question is not about this vendor.Big Questionis
many such customer issues companies are either not aware of or ignoring. Lost
customer is costly. As happy customers buy more & can bring more referral customers,
unhappy & lost customers not only take away revenue but takes away some
other customers too.

Ask your sales team how difficult these days to get a
new customer. After having one, it is up to the management
to decide how to treat him. You can make him feel very special &
go out of the way to help or treat him with all system, process &
management shortcomings.

In times of stiff competition when getting customer is difficult and losing can be costly , isn't it all the more IMPORTANT & CRITICAL to offer delightful customer experience ?

Sunday, November 10, 2013

Price negotiation is a part of business deal making process. It
is business as usual and entrepreneurs should not mind involving in
negotiation with customers.

This is the response from one of the hoteliers in response to
price negotiation request:

Rs. XXXXX/- final.I will give u the old rates.sorry, if u want the
experience,youhave
to beable to payfor
it.specially if u want to celebrate an anniversary.

With the above response, deal was closed and customer was
lost.

Learning is when one is engaged in negotiation it
is not always about one's affordability. Rather than talking about potential
customers' ability, entrepreneurs MUST be able to explain
WHY negotiation is not possible. This is true even
if you are in monopoly business.

Customer is a millionaire but he won’t pay whatever he is asked to
pay. He will negotiate and will pay full
when satisfied that wherever is asked is fair and
reasonable considering what he is getting in return.

Negotiation is not about customers’ ability but it
is about convincing customers that whatever is quoted is
the best possible quote.

Following reply could have saved
the customer and deal:

We appreciate and acknowledge that this is your special
day and you would like to make it memorable by spending a few days with us. Let
me assure you we will make special attempt to make it memorable.

As far as pricing is concerned we have been able to
maintain the property in such a beautiful way to offer best possible experience
to our customers. You have acknowledged the same by referring to
reviews about our property on tripadvisor.

Therefore I request you please do not negotiate on price and
we on our part make an extra effort to make your special day , very special
with us. We look forward to welcome you on your special day.

Even if one is not able to
afford Rs. XXXXX/- , the above communication could have saved the customer
for future engagement and even for referral business.

Point is ; communication plays very important role in business
deals & customer experience creation. It can break the deal or
make the deal and can bring more referral customers.

Its always how you make customer feel while dealing with you, not
only while using your product or services but during the entire process.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Experience Design or Service Design, both requires mindset of
HOW customer would behave & WHAT customer would want out of the
service /experience.

These are the major issues everywhere. Service provider
neither engages with service designers nor engages with customer experience
designers.

Result: pathetic customer experience, unhappy customer, stressed
and frustrated customers & even citizen when it comes to public utilities.

Be it design, process, experience or communication most
business fails miserably. I have a few experiences during last one week.
Today I will share one of them.

In Mumbai, Mumbai Central is a station where from out
station long distance trains leave. This is also one of the
stations for local trains. Therefore many people get down from local trains at
Mumbai Central to catch their long distance trains.

Earlier there was only one bridge and way from local platforms to
reach platforms for out station long distance trains. In between there
was a ticket window which was also serving people who wanted to buy platform ticket to
enter long distance train platforms.

Since last few years they have built one more bridge , to enter platforms for long distance trains , which is
closer from local train bridge than the old bridge. Everyone need not walk long
distance to reach the long distance train platforms with their luggage. Good
thinking.

Now this new bridge can be used by three kinds of
commuters:

- Actual long distance traveller -Need to
know on which platform train will arrive to get down on proper platform with
luggage

- People accompanying the long distance traveller -Need to buy platform ticket

- People just want to get out of Mumbai Central Station
and are not long distance traveler -just
need to walk till exit on the other end of the bridge

Now this new bridge does not have sign
board indicating on which platform trains will
arrive. This is absolute must requirement.

Ticket window for person wanting to buy platform ticket was quite
far & closed. I do not know whether it remains open any time
during the day.

Therefore only people who can use this bridge effectively are people
who want to exit the station or want to enter local train platforms through this
route.

For first two categories of people in spite of the new
bridge there is no option but to travel through old route with their luggage to
reach the long distance train platform.

Therefore so much of investments in bridge just to cater to one
class of people out of the three classes which requires this bridge.

Issue is of design; issue is of applying mind to know
who will use this bridge & what people wants while using
this bridge. Design & experience mindset both were lacking here.

No effective use of resources results in public inconvenience.These kinds of service design and customer experience issues are
rampant across the industry and public utilities.

Today's corporations otherwise are cause of mass unhappiness with their ONLY share holder driven policies. Only PROFIT at the cost of customers & employees unhappiness , social & ethical erosion in values.

From whatever angle you look at: CX focus is the only way for sustainable competitive advantage & social betterment.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

If you have finest of hardware i.e. laptop, electric cord , socket
, mouse etc but as far as software is concerned you do not have matching
software, either its older version or its inadequate,
its incompatible & it can't help you to achieve
your purpose.

Scenario Two:

Imagine reverse: You have smarter software but
weak hardware. You can achieve your purpose but it takes little longer due
to weak hardware. But out put is much superior.

Out of the two which scenario do you prefer? Ideally
both will make it perfect but given a choice between the two, I think the
answer is scenario two.

But do not have well trained staff, seamless customer friendly
processes , customer friendly policies.

What will happen? You can’t achieve
your business results. You can’t make your brand stand out, you can’t
make rave fans, you can’t beat someone working with second scenario. You will
have to spend more on marketing & advertising but customer
retention is an issue.

But patient waiting area was irritatingly noisy due to non
maintenance of door closure. Person handling the patient during the process was
ill trained to handle senior citizen. For him it was a one more
number to tick & getting ready for the
next patient. Showing careless hurry to a patient who has gone
through MRI (highly disturbing to mind) and weak at knee was a killer. It
was a perfect case of customer experience (CX) disaster.

They have lost a patient forever. My dad told me not to ever visit
this centre and to find a new diagnostic centre. It may be far , it may be costly
but not this one close my residence. & he told about his experience to all his friends &
relatives.

All enterprise must know where to put its effort and where
to invest to get the desired end result. Walk the talk , walk the customer journey. Just putting up finest of hardware is not enough.

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Everything that a customer feels, thinks, sees is all CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX).

Mof McDonald represents fun, food, taste, ambiance, service excellence, smiling & helpful employees. M reminds us of all these. Therefore Mis not a logo or McDonald is not a brand , but it is all about what M& McDonald represents.

Whenever next-time you think of designing your logo or planning a branding exercise, if the same is not commensurate with the experience your business is offering to the customer. It will not be a branding exercise. It will be a waste or It will be all negative experiences it can recall.

The 1st step is designing Customer Experience. Branding will follow from Customer Experience.

Have you designed your CX & walked your Customer Journey to know the brand your entrepreneurial efforts are building ?

These are the steps. These are the steps to create wow & awe customer experience. These are the steps to create un-duplicable customer experience. These are the steps to create sustainable competitive advantage. These are the steps to business survival in otherwise commoditised world.

Friday, September 6, 2013

Your company may be working in SILOs but customers see through the company as one entity or brand. This is the reason companies are at greater risk of being exposed. Many enterprises may think that only front-end people and front-end outlets are being exposed in front of Customers. Customer experiences your enterprise in following ways during their journey.

Whatever the enterprise does at the back-end invariably touches the customer.

When Mr Zubin Mehta will perform in Kashmir on 7th Sep, in front of the audience, he is aware that they are in front of their audience and their preparation will be in tune with that. There is however no difference be it audience or customer but difference lies with symphony orchestra conductor and business enterprise conductors ie CXOs. One is aware and others are not aware that they are in-front of the customers and are exposed to them whatever /where-ever they do. Become aware that your enterprise is staging a show in front of your customers & prepare accordingly. Remember author duo - Pine & Gilmore - Work is a theater, every business a stage.